Be Different or be dead

June 20, 2020

How cool information technology solutions can separate you from the crowd

How cool information technology solutions can separate you from the crowd.

Today, if your company doesn’t stand out from others, it will be ignored. Perhaps, you will attract customers and earn some income but it will be hard to win the hearts of the audience, gain popularity, generate profit, and grow a business. To fill a niche on the market and sidestep rivals, you need to not just address user issues but be different.

In our competitive world, it is quite challenging to provide unique value. Fortunately, there are many technological solutions and innovations that will help you accomplish this goal. To begin with, you should answer some important questions.

Top 7 questions to define how your business will differ

Nowadays, it’s not enough to have a website with the description of services. If you want to succeed, you need to do more than some must-have activities such as registration in social networks. Although I should note that if you boost your online presence, for example, on Instagram, Facebook, LinkedIn, Twitter, you will outrun some competitors.

To see how to make your products or services unique, you should analyze your:

▪️Customers
▪️Competitors
▪️Own company

For this purpose, answer the following questions:

— Who are your customers?

— Why do these customers choose your organization and stay with you?

— What customers do you want to attract and where can you find them?

— Who are your competitors? How did they achieve success? How do they retain clients?

— What strong and weak sides do your rivals have?

— What business processes can you improve and automate?

— Why should people turn to your company when there are various alternatives?

By answering these questions, you will define your competencies and understand how you can add unique value to the target audience. Furthermore, it will help you develop the best strategic plan.

In this article, I describe 5 technological solutions that will allow you to stand out from other companies and win.

Top 5 software solutions to stand out from competitors

1. Robotic process automation

To attract and retain customers, the first and most important task is to deliver extraordinary service. This includes client support 24/7, instant answers on frequently asked questions, personalized recommendations for products, content, or services.

RPA is the usage of software programs that allow automating manual, routine, rule-based, and repetitive activities, for instance, data search, analysis, or entry. Based on the given instructions and scenarios, RPA software bots replace humans in performing certain actions, saving their time, and boosting the overall productivity.

Robotic process automation is used across a variety of industries helping increase data accuracy and staff efficiency. According to McKinsey research ’Automating the bank’s back office’, by streamlining IT-related operations (e.g., software employment for enterprise resource planning) with RPA technology, banks can improve customer service by more than 50%.

In 2015, Vanguard Group, the globally leading provider of investment management services, integrated so-called Personal Advisor Services—“roboadvisors”—to provide millions of clients with the personalized financial advice and investment plans. Thanks to RPA software, the company reduced the time for email processing and enhanced communications with users.

2. CRM systems

Another way to improve customer service and stand out from competitors is to integrate a CRM system. Analysts at Salesforce say that a CRM helps businesses boost sales by 29%, enhance accuracy of sales forecasting by 42%, and raise productivity—by up to 34%.

A CRM solution can provide a range of benefits allowing you to keep contact information up to date, track leads, manage multiple accounts, and segment the audience. CRM software is created to monitor all interactions that your current and potential clients have with your organization. This will allow your company to stay in touch with customers, improve lead management, and launch personalized advertising and email marketing campaigns.

3. Customer loyalty programs

In accordance with the report ’The truth about customer loyalty’ published in 2019 by KPMG, 86% of buyers would recommend a product or service if they are loyal to the company. What’s more, 43% of consumers will remain loyal even after having a bad experience. So, how do you increase customer satisfaction?

One of the best ways is to build a mobile application that will serve as a loyalty program. Imagine how it can work: people can access services via smartphones at any time, browse and order goods, make payments with a few clicks, receive push notifications about new products and special offers. You can employ a point system, so that users can earn and exchange them for some rewards, for example, gifts or discounts.

4. Big data analytics

Using big data analytics, organizations can analyze customer behavior, define their preferences, and understand how to tailor products or services to their needs. You can collect data from various channels, for instance, social media accounts, activities in social networks, results of polls and surveys, watch/search/purchasing history, etc.

By processing this information with, for example, machine learning algorithms, you will see what things you should improve, what your clients really enjoy and what they don’t. This will also help create personalized messages that will delight your audience.

5. Artificial Intelligence-based chatbots

The integration of an AI-based chatbot into your website or application will significantly improve customer service while relieving employees from various activities such as answering FAQ and processing numerous requests.

According to the research by Ideal company, 64% of people think that the biggest advantage of AI bots is 24-hour client service. 55% of customers especially appreciate instant response to their issues. Other 55% of consumers say that the key benefit is receiving quick answers to their questions.

Nitro Café managed to boost sales by 20% thanks to the creation of a Messenger chatbot that enabled simple food ordering, direct payments, and 2-way communication. By adopting a Facebook Messenger Chatbot, Globe Telecom increased customer loyalty by 22% and reduced call volumes by 50%.

Closing thoughts

The use of software solutions is one of the most effective ways to sidestep rivals, provide the best services, and generate profit as a result. Before creating something new, conduct a competitor analysis, determine the audience needs, and define your strong and weak sides.

Ask yourself: “How can I add value to users?”, “How do I make my company and products unique?”, “How can I streamline the existing business processes?”. This will let you see what you should improve and how.

For instance, you can integrate a chatbot to automate email communications, deliver 24/7 client support, and remove human errors. In addition, find out how to recover service and engage your customers.

— Bogdan is a co-founder at YSBM Group, an European custom software development company with offices in Poland and Ukraine. Bogdan is interested in programming, machine learning, robotic process automation, big data, natural language processing, and enterprise software.

• Posted 6.20.20 at 05:57 am by Roy Osing
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June 15, 2020

How to make your business plan better with COVID-19

Source: Pexels

How to make your business plan better with COVID-19.

Take a look at your strategic planning documents. I will wager that the vast majority of them are based on a 5 year period — YIKES! I’ve even seen 10-year plans as well.

The 5-year plan pervades our planning paradigms and quite frankly it’s nonsense in today’s world of chaos, unpredictability and uncertainty.

The COVID-19 pandemic and the destruction it’s had on businesses and other organizations worldwide is the extreme example of the fact that a long planning horizon is a ridiculous notion.
I doubt that many businesses contemplated they would be struggling for survival in just 8 short weeks after the WHO declared the coronavirus a pandemic March 11, 2020.
So much for the value of having a 60-month view of your business.

I wonder how many 5-year plans are sitting on the shelf right now? How many are being consulted to help businesses through this difficult time?
I would say ZERO, which really declares the value they are to any organization being ravished by an unexpected event.

The investment made in having a planning view 3, 4, and 5 years out is delivering a negligible return on investment in the current environment.

The truth is, the fifth year of a 5-year plan never shows up so what is the purpose of planning for it?

Every year the plan is revised to reflect new information that changes the complexion of the plan and in particular the latter years which end up to be an extrapolation of current trends with absolutely no influence on the actions needed to be taken today to raise performance.

If we take this thinking to its logical conclusion, it suggests that the shorter the planning period, the more accurate it is in terms of expressing the real challenges an organization will likely face and the actions they will have to take to face them.

If you can’t survive the short term, the long term never shows up.

COVID-19 reality — perhaps the extreme way to think of it — would suggest a “planning period” of 24 hours because that’s how rapidly things are changing at the moment as I write this post.

I know (and hope) COVID won’t last forever but its short term survival imperative should guide our thinking about how to create a meaningful plan for our organizations.

My conclusion — and it’s a view I’ve had for many years, but certainly emphasized and reinforced by the current pandemic — is that strategic plans must have a short term executional focus if they are to be meaningful and useful at all.

I believe that to survive the forces of an ever changing environment, executional tactics within a notional context of your organization’s long term endgame should define your strategic plan.

The sum of pristinely executing every tactical element of the plan should define your strategy because it recognizes that chaotic change is the new normal that must be successfully met by the leadership team.

The execution plan should replace the strategic plan nomenclature to give us the clarity we need to determine the success every organization covets.

I’ve suggested that the execution planning time horizon should be 24 months, but that was before COVID. I think realistically we need to think about figuring out what we need to do over the next 12 months to try and improve our chances for survival.

The new execution plan process should look like this:
- Declare your 12-month goals
- EXECUTE
- Track the results
- Learn from what you’ve accomplished
- Adjust the plan
- Go back to EXECUTE

The result of this process is that your plan suddenly morphs to a living document rather than the inert 5-year view. It’s an organic action compilation and changes with the environment as one learns what works and what doesn’t through execution.

And the actual plan document — if it exists at all — takes on a dual role of being both a description of strategic intent and a repository of learning.

It’s a messy document. It’s written on. It has coffee stains on the pages of which many are earmarked for specific reference.
And, it may possess the odd blood stain from an unwanted paper cut!

It is used, unlike many planning documents that I have seen which look like their original pristine ironed form (perched ever so elegantly on a bookshelf where one can hand gesture its presence but never violate its binding).

The strategic planning community will take issue with my approach. After all I suppose it is somewhat gratifying to believe that pristine appearance and a long term perspective somehow defines its worth.

But it doesn’t.

At best this view gives the organization the perception that it has a plan that will be good 5 years out; at worst it prevents the organization from building short term defences to prepare for the unexpected forces that will threaten its survival.

COVID presents n opportunity to make your business plan better. Seize it…

Cheers,
Roy
Check out my BE DiFFERENT or be dead Book Series

• Posted 6.15.20 at 05:02 am by Roy Osing
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June 10, 2020

Why being sorry is the secret to great customer service

Source: Unsplash

It’s counterintuitive perhaps, but if ‘I’m sorry’ isn’t in your customer service playbook you’re missing the opportunity to create amazing experiences for your customers.

And be rewarded for it.

No apology = no service recovery = no customer

The service recovery chain goes like this:

— You screw-up;

— You acknowledge that you screwed up;

— You apologize;

— You atone for your sins;

— You fix the problem to the customer’s expectations;

— You blow the customer away by doing something they DON’T expect.

A failure to apologize breaks the chain and a de-dazzling event (with a loss of customer loyalty) ensues.

So, lose your ego.

Take responsibility for your actions.

Its not about culpability, its about empathizing with the customer and feeling bad that you screwed them around.

Being human, not an impersonal organization.

Some claim an apology will actually reduce settlement claims for major screw-ups.
That said, the short term economics of “I’m Sorry” are overshadowed by the long term loyalty you achieve by not breaking the chain and having a mind-blowing Service Recovery.

Be at ease with apologizing; it’s a strategic act.

Make no mistake about it.

Cheers,
Roy
Check out my BE DiFFERENT or be dead Book Series

• Posted 6.10.20 at 12:59 pm by Roy Osing
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June 8, 2020

How your performance can improve by looking 360 degrees around you

Source: Unsplash

How your performance can improve by looking 360 degrees around you.

I am a zealot about the 360 degree feedback tool of performance management.

360 feedback is not new, but in my leadership experience it is one of the most effective methods of assessing how you perform your responsibilities, and what you need to do to improve for future opportunities.

And it works for all sizes of business and not-for-profits.

There are two components of performance management that benefit from feedback:

Performance evaluation

The assessment of HOW you do are performing your role today: your behaviors and competencies, how others perceive you, your listening, planning, and goal-setting skills and other dimensions such as teamwork, character, and leadership effectiveness.

Performance development

Determining the things you need to do to improve your performance in the future.

360 Feedback provides a view of your performance not only from your boss, but also from your peers and others in the organization that interact with you on a regular basis.

Your peers provide the most honest appraisal of how you currently perform your responsibilities; next on the honest scale are your colleagues and the least honest is your boss.

Its not that your boss is incompetent, its just that they don’t get to see you every day doing your thing like others do. In addition your boss may be seeing your behavior through rose colored glasses, but your peers aren’t.
And they are not shy about giving you the feedback you need to hear.

In terms of identifying what you need to do to improve your performance, 360 Feedback provides a multi-dimensional view of what key changes you need to make.

Dysfunctional behaviors are identified - with no holds barred - along with specific strengths and other weaknesses that need to be addressed.

Action planning

Here’s how to get the most personal payback from 360 feedback.

▪️ make your target audience as robust as possible and thank them for helping you;
▪️ In addition to your direct boss, include their colleagues in your feedback list;
▪️ ask all your peers;
▪️ select other key individuals in the organization that are impacted by your work. I always included frontline people in order to see how well I was supporting them;
▪️ ask for feedback every six months;
▪️ communicate your results to your feedback audience. You may find this uncomfortable, but it is an expression of confidence and leadership people will notice and not forget;
▪️ build a feedback action plan to address address your shortfalls and continue to strengthen what you do well;
▪️ communicate your action plan to your feedback audience. Make sure they all know what you intend to do to improve your results.

The 360 Feedback method is only for people who really want to perform better and prepare for future opportunities — and for those who have the thick skin to accept honesty. Give it a try.

Cheers,
Roy
Check out my BE DiFFERENT or be dead Book Series

• Posted 6.8.20 at 01:00 am by Roy Osing
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